Hollywood Gets Brainy

Who says eggheads have no place in the movie industry? Tino Balio, a professor in the Communication Arts department at the University of Wisconsin (in Madison), and Donald Crafton, professor of communication and theater at Notre Dame, have been named as the two first-ever Academy Film Scholars by the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, reports Variety. They will each receive a $25,000 grant to further enhance the study of film and filmmaking. Balio's upcoming dissertation will reportedly be a comprehensive institutional history of foreign films and their influence on American film culture. Crafton, on the other hand, will analyze animated cartoon shorts from 1928 to 1939, "to reveal the important social relevance underlying these superficially insignificant productions," he promises.